Many of you may be familiar with the Business Data Catalog (BDC) feature of MOSS 2007 that allowed for the integration of SharePoint with various line-of-business (LOB) systems on a read-only basis. In SharePoint 2010, the BDC has become the BCS – Business Connectivity Services. The BCS has it’s own dedicated database and runs as it’s own service application (as do many of the other services in SharePoint 2010) that can be enabled at the Web Application level.

With Microsoft Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 capabilities, people are now empowered with read and write access to LOB applications and external data sources (such as SQL, Oracle, SAP, CRM, Siebel, Web services, and custom applications), whether they are online or offline. An entire site can be taken offline by using Microsoft Office Workspace and then users can resynchronize when they’re reconnected to the network.

There are many new improvements to Search within SharePoint 2010 including the new FAST Search application which further extends the out-of-box SharePoint search capability. One exciting new FAST feature is “Visual Best Bets” within your search results. Visual best bets show you a thumbnail image of each document found in the search results. For certain file types such as PowerPoint, it even goes as far as allowing you to scroll through a PowerPoint presentation all while staying within your search results page. Very impressive!

During today’s SharePoint 2010 Ignite training, it was apparent that Microsoft is now turning to Windows PowerShell as the primary command line tool for interaction with SharePoint.

I learned about many of the advantages that are obtained by utilizing the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell to script administrative tasks in SharePoint Server 2010. Windows PowerShell cmdlets go far beyond the capabilities of previous command-line tools such as STSADM. Windows PowerShell is not a replacement for STSADM, but it certainly seems to be more flexible and powerful.

The Hands-On labs gave me a test drive into the following areas:

How to use Windows PowerShell scripting techniques, such as pipes, filters, wildcards, and enumerations, for SharePoint Server 2010 administration.

How to assign variables and use the SharePoint object model from Windows PowerShell.

This week I have the privilege of attending Microsoft’s SharePoint 2010 Ignite Virtual training course. SharePoint 2010 Ignite is deep technical training for SharePoint 2007 professionals who are looking to upgrade their skills to the new version of SharePoint. I am excited to learn more about the new features and functionalities of SharePoint Server 2010.

The first day included an overview of the following:

New User Interface (the Ribbon)

Architectural Changes

Introduction to the new Service Application model (no more Shared Service Provider - SSP)